Wine of the week: Yellow + Blue Chardonnay 2011

The Yellow + Blue boxed wines have long been among the Wine Curmudgeon ?s favorites ? cheap, well-made, and aimed at wine drinkers who want a quality product without any fuss.

Retailers have not always shared that enthusiasm. The wines come in a 1-liter juice box with plastic screwcap, which is terrific for consumers but problematic for retailers. Stores, after all, are built with shelves designed for 750-milliliter bottles. So the wines, if the retailer carries them at all ( ?Boxed wine? We don ?t need no stinkin ? boxed wine ?), get shunted to the back of the store, out of sight and out of mind.

That ?s too bad. The Yellow + Blue rose, torrontes, and sauvignon blanc are top notch, and each has been in the $10 Hall of Fame at one time or another. The chardonnay ($10, purchased, 13.5%), though not quite as well done as the best Yellow + Blue wines, may be an even more impressive achievement.

That ?s because the grapes come from Lodi in California, hardly the lodestone of chardonnay and a region that out tankerloads of flabby and almost sweet versions of the varietal. Yellow + Blue impresario Matt Cain, though, has made a wine with pleasant tropical fruit and a bit of a pithy finish that tastes like chardonnay. That ?s not easy to do, given what he was working with in Lodi.

This is the kind of well-priced and professional wine that we need to see more of from California. Now all we have to do is to convince retailers it ?s worth carrying.